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I drop to my knees, my hands flying to my head and clawing at my scalp as if I could tear the agony out. The world tilts, the gray plain dissolving into static.

“Remiel!” But Vyxia’s voice is distant, distorted by the roaring in my ears.

I was on my back, the floor beneath me cold and smooth stone polished to a mirror sheen. My lungs filled with air that was sterile and clean and smelled of ozone and judgment, causing me to gasp. I tried to sit up, but pain ripped through my chest, forcing a groan from my lips. I looked down to find my shirt torn and bandages wrapped tight around my ribs, where blood seeped through the white linen.

Recognizing the three walls of white stones and the fourth of shimmering, impenetrable light, I looked around the cell. I knew this place—the holding cells behind the tribunal chamber.

“Why am I here?” I croaked, my throat raw as if I’d been screaming for days.

A voice came from the corner, raspy and ancient. “You are here before your cleansing.”

I turned my head to see a figure sitting in the shadows, robes of shifting gray obscuring its form and a deep cowl hiding its face. Its hands—skeletal, woven from starlight and shadows—held a hefty leather-bound tome.

The figure materialized fully, not by walking but by simply ceasing to be in the corner and beginning to be by my cot. The grand intermediary, the keeper of the archive.

I tried to push myself up, my arms shaking. “Cleansing?”

“Yes,” the keeper said, its voice matter-of-fact. “The stasis. The sleep that heals the fracture.”

“I don’t need healing,” I spat, the defiance tasting of iron. “I need to get back to her!”

“She is gone.” The finality of the words settled like dust. “And you are broken, Guardian. Your light is bleeding out. Your mind is fracturing.”

It pulled a chair closer, the wood scraping against the stone floor, and sat down. It then placed the tome on its lap. The book hovered for a moment before opening, its pages fluttering like trapped birds. They were all blank. Clean. Waiting.

“Before you are put into stasis, you need to retell the events of your becoming. For the record.”

“Why?” I asked, confusion swirling in my head. “The tribunal has the records. They saw everything.”

“The tribunal sees what it wants to see.” Sand fell relentlessly in the keeper’s eyes as it leaned forward. “The archive needs the truth, and we have little time. They have already started the process. Your memories are leaking, Remiel. We must catch them before they’re erased.” It shifted the book forward, as if to give me the blank pages. “Tell me. Tell me of the bond, of the seraph. Tell me of the blade.”

“Why?” I asked, a desperate anchor in the shifting reality. “What does it matter?”

“You never know when history will be useful. And yours definitely has a purpose.”

“Are you okay, man?” Jareth asks, his voice pulling me back from the edge of my memories.

I gasp, the gray dust of Limbo rushing back into focus. The glowing tower looms ahead like a beacon in the dark. Jareth is holding me upright, his grip strong, while Vyxia stands nearby, her face pale.

She looks from the tower to me. “Remiel?” she asks, her voice trembling.

I shake my head, trying to clear the fog. The memory retreats but leaves a sticky residue of certainty behind. I stand, brushing the dust from my knees. “I spoke to it,” I whisper, the realization hitting me.

“Spoke to what?” Jareth asks, frowning.

“The archive.” I turn to look at them. “Before. Before the sleep. I told it everything.”

The gap in my memory, the fifty years of silence—it isn’t just lost time. It is stolen and cataloged.

“I told it about the seraph.” The words taste of old blood.

Vyxia frowns deeper. “What seraph?”

“Serion.”

“The alchemist seraph? I heard he disappeared…” Her voice trailed off.

“…No.” My voice is as hard and as cold as the stone floor of that cell. “He didn’t disappear.” I close my eyes, reaching for the memory, for the moment the blade connected. “I killed him.”